Again, the task of the political scientist
should not be to condone or condemn this state of affairs, but to try to understand
why people feel so disenfranchised. Consequently, the researcher should tackle
and discuss the policies which make those populations suffer. Unfortunately,
this is not something which most political scientists seem in the least
concerned about. ‘Not to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to
understand’ said Spinoza. Before looking down on the
disoriented and angry voters who fall for the demagogues or dismissing all
‘radicals’ as undisputed ‘populists’, it would indeed be worth pausing for a
moment to understand how those agents feel and to ask what they want.
Political scientists should also wonder why more and more ‘moderate’ voters no longer believe in the enchanted world of ‘moderate
politics’.
Yee Sian Ng on 07 Mar 10"IT IS TIME to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. On the all-important question of power - the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power - American and European perspectives are diverging. Europe is turning away from power, or to put it a little differently, it is moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Kant's "Perpetual Peace." The United States, meanwhile, remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might. That is why on major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus: They agree on little and understand one another less and less. And this state of affairs is not transitory - the product of one American election or one catastrophic event. The reasons for the transatlantic divide are deep, long in development, and likely to endure. When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways."
